According to Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Bush was so obsessed with Iraq that he failed to take action against Osama Bin Laden despite repeated warnings from his intelligence experts.

I think it's a pity that in many people's minds constitutional reform and PR have come to mean much the same thing.

According to Richard Clarke, the former White House counterterrorism chief, Bush was so obsessed with Iraq that he failed to take action against Osama Bin Laden despite repeated warnings from his intelligence experts.

The president is being denounced for not taking the kind of pre-emptive action in Afghanistan that he has been so passionately denounced for taking in Iraq. Damned if he does and damned if he doesn't.

A majority in all parties do, I think, want to see local government recover its old vigour and independence.

Why should people be expected to think about the meaning of life merely because they happen to be ill? That is just the time when there is no time to think about such things, because the body is so greedy for attention.

Something is happening to Britain and the British. Or has happened. We are said to be passing through a transition, or a turning point, or a transformation; nobody is quite sure which.